The act of selecting a television program to watch has become more complicated in that the number of available channels has increased dramatically of late. For example RCA.RTM. DSS.RTM. direct broadcast satellite receivers provide as many as 150 channels to choose from. Heretofore, a user who wanted to see "what's on" could merely consult a television schedule printed in his local newspaper in the hope that he would eventually find a program which sparked his interest.
Such a practice may work well when there are only a few television channel schedules to examine, however, it is unlikely that a viewer would be able to examine the complete schedules for 150 television channels, just to see "what's on" at a given time. Such a task would be daunting even if all of the programs were to be listed by category. A viewer may find that there are only a few programs of interest to him out of the vast number of available programs. That is, the chaff outnumbers and tends to hide the wheat. Consequently, it is felt that as the number of channels increases, the chances of successfully locating a desirable program in a short time becomes more and more unlikely.